Something’s in the air in Bonnie Doon

There’s something in the air in certain parts of the city that anyone with a nose for news knows isn’t right. It was sniffed out during Friday’s Utilities Committee meeting at City Hall.

We’ve long heard about the problems in West Jasper Place. Now Coun. Ben Henderson has added select parts of Bonnie Doon for investigation. “If you wander around that kind of intersection at Marie Gaboury, in the heart of the community. You can certainly smell it there,” Henderson said. “I’ve experienced it myself in that neighborhood and I’ve been hearing for years.”

Henderson suspects drainage, but isn’t sure.

“If it gets overly pressurized it begins to push the kind of rotting leaf odor, that kind of smell back up the pipes and out on the street. That’s been a problem for a long long time.”

“If you’re living on a street where it’s an issue it’s something we need to deal with. It’s certainly not acceptable.”

“The pipes that are coming down from Bonnie Doon are not really the problem. I think it’s the effect of having the amount of volume that we’re now getting coming from further south, coming through into the main line pipe and pushing it up. Some how we have to find a way that that doesn’t begin to push odor back up these feeder pipes.”

The city continues to work on solving the West Jasper Place problem. Infrastructure boss Adam Laughlin said they’re both working on the immediate problem as they build a by pass underground so they can further inspect to find the source, but they’re also working on an overall strategy that will come back in new year to find a holistic solution.

Laughlin told reporters they could use more air scrubbers and other mechanical measures however they too come with side effects like more noise. “There’s chemical treatments, there’s other things that can be done but it’s really trying to find the sweet spot of what’s the right treatment for one that doesn’t create an ancillary impact for another.”

Utility committee heard that for the most part their drainage infrastructure is in relatively good shape. Mayor Don Iveson pegs it’s value if it had to be built new at $17 billion.

“We do have some isolated challenges that are worse than we thought around West Jasper Place. It’s one of these cascading situations If we built it ourselves, the infrastructure the city’s built over the years is in much better condition but we inherited this back in the 60’s from the town of Jasper Place and so we don’t have the same quality assurance that Edmontonians can expect from infrastructure that we’ve built.”

The committee also recommended to city council, the passing of the budget that sees monthly rates increase, but not as substantially as first thought almost a year ago. The typical homeowner will pay $1.90 more per month, 26 cents less than the original estimate, roughly $44.90.